Sunday, October 21, 2012

COVER REVEAL & EXCERPT FROM "DARK SERAPHINE" BY KASONNDRA LEIGH

Without Kyle by my side, I now faced with heading into my Trig class too early. Nobody blazed a trail to be the first one sitting around and waiting on the teacher. Because of Kyle’s hormones, I faced looking super un-cool and nerdy. When you put those words together, you never came away looking sexy.Stepping into the room, I immediately noticed that I was right. I headed straight for the back row. I turned around and almost wet my pants.

The new girl was sitting in a desk at the front of the room. She wore that same faraway look they always have, these Walkers do. I gave them that nickname because sometimes a ghostly film trailed behind them. It always reminded me of angel wings. Otherwise, I guess they might be considered plain old ghosts. To label them as spirits kind of took away from their magic. The mystery people were always super gorgeous, like this chick: slick, dark hair that stopped just below her shoulders, a long oval-shaped face, and nice skin. And they always wore something dark: black jackets, jeans, and a tee shirt.

To admit this girl made my skin crawl sounded sissy and weak. This wasn’t the time to be a wuss. Manning up, I squared my shoulders before I sat down. The little kid in me wanted to run away like a baby. But then she laughed. It was a high-pitched giggle, a normal girl’s chuckle. It surprised me. That wasn’t right. I couldn’t ever remember the Walkers laughing before.

“Go ahead and run. I’ll just simply find you like I always do,” she said, her face still turned toward the teacher’s wipe board. Her voice was smooth like a forgotten song, a hypnotic one. I could listen to it all day long. But even super sexy voice didn’t change the fact that she pretty much read my mind.

“Have you decided whether you’ll run or not yet? I have an awful lot of things to take care of.” She turned her head the slightest bit to the side.

My underarms prickled. I was glad that Mom forced me to start using the clinical strength deodorant this morning; to say I was nervous wasn’t even close to how I felt.

“Are you an angel?” I asked, my voice squeaking on the last word. What a dork. She didn’t frighten me too badly, but I wasn’t exactly ready to get her phone number either. As a little kid, I remember talking to a few of the Walkers. As soon as I hit my thirteenth birthday the ability to communicate with them disappeared. This was the first time I’d spoken to one in years.

“I hate to tell you this, but I’m not a ghost an angel or a zombie. Sorry.” She turned around to face me, an amused expression on her ridiculously gorgeous face. I inhaled sharply and held my breath. The word beautiful didn’t do this Walker-girl any type of justice. Her strange, dark eyes with the specks of blue and green inside the irises pierced into me.I swallowed hard and found my voice. “So then, what are you? You’re not the only one I’ve seen or talked to. And why do I have the honor of being the stalked one?”

She made a light laugh and tilted her head. Her slick black hair flowed around her face as if it were made of silky thread. “Others have come before me?” She seemed to have said it to herself rather than asking me. One thing I did know for certain. I was probably going to be committed to the loony ward after all of this. “I’m going to need your help soon, Caleb. So be ready.”

“Be ready for what?” I asked, crossing my arms and feeling just a tad flirtatious. A desperate idiot. Kyle was chasing Erica the Stiff. And me, I got some sort of angel girl sitting in front of me. A good man always knows when to aim for the right goal.

She glanced behind my head just before a sudden crash thundered behind me. My heart leapt into my throat. I jumped up and spun around thinking it sounded like gunshots. But I was being paranoid. It wasn’t a gun or anything at all threatening. The classroom clock had fallen. Bits and pieces of it lay all over the floor.

I groaned. “Oh hell. They’ll think I did this.”

“What in the world did you do, Caleb Wood?” a girl’s nasal voice asked me. I turned around to find Jillian Bowman and her tortoise shell glasses grinning at me. She was the last person I wanted to see. What, or rather who did I not find?—the Walker girl. She’d vanished.

Something hitched in my chest. I wanted to know more about her. I’d never gotten so intimate with them before. She told me to be ready.